Pathway to Tomorrow (13 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Marcus stared at Luke.  “What do you mean, we’re going to the pa
rk?”

His son gave him a withering look.  Going to the park meant going to the park.  What else could it mean?

“It’s my fault. I told him we’d go when you and Izzie got back,” Jodie took charge of the conversation. 

Luke gave a sigh of relief.  She seemed to know what his father was talking about, the same as she knew how much he liked to look at the trees swaying in the breeze. She had joined him on the balcony after his swimming session and talked to him about the birds.  Then they had had a long discussion about birdseed.  Luke knew a lot about that.  He knew it was important to give the birds the right mix, a mix that was different in the summer when they had fledglings to feed. They had talked about the trees too.  And the different shapes of the leaves. And then the wind had started gusting around the branches making them sway to and fro. When they did, the nice fuzzy feeling he always got when he watched them had started to creep over him. It must have made Jodie feel the same because soon she stopped talking and just sat beside him and watched the trees too.

Now she was talking again though, and quite loudly. She was having an argument with his father. Luke covered up his ears so he couldn’t hear them.

“You had no right to promise any such thing,” Marcus said.  “Luke doesn’t go out, period! We’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.  He just gets upset and angry, especially when people look at him.”

“That’s ridiculous.  You can’t keep him trapped indoors forever. He has to learn to cope…with people, with situations, with life. You’re not doing him any favors by protecting him like this.”

“Easy for you to say,” Marcus scowled at her.  “You don’t have to live with his behavior day after day.”

“I know,” she put a placatory hand on his arm.  “But I do know what can be achieved.  I’ve seen children who wouldn’t even look at a horse when they first arrived at the stables, happily riding around without a leading rein within a few months.

“You and your damned horses! That riding program you run doesn’t make you a world expert on autistic children you know.”

She withdrew her hand and met his scowl with one of her own.  “I didn’t say it did, but I do know Luke is worth more than this.  He’s a bright boy. He loves nature, loves the sunshine, and yet he only ever experiences them from a concrete balcony.  What sort of life is that?”

“Why do you think I’m moving to somewhere where he will be surrounded by trees, and where he’ll have the freedom of a large garden?  It certainly isn’t for my own convenience.”

“But he’ll still be isolated won’t he? Come on Marcus.  Give him a chance. Come to the park with us.  If Luke has a meltdown then you can blame me, but I don’t think he will.”

“Because…?”

“Because he told me he gets to choose what he wants to do for two hours after lunch, and today he has chosen to go to the park to see the birds.”

Irritated, because he knew she was right, Marcus gave a bad-tempered shrug.  He couldn’t remember Luke ever electing to go out before, but nor could he remember the last time he’d been given the option.  Worn down by his son’s tantrums and by what appeared to be his genuine terror of new faces and experiences, Marcus had taken the easy way out. Aided and abetted by Mrs. Cotton and his team of care workers, he had devised a way of life that kept Luke on an even keel. Apart from going down to the pool and gym in the basement he rarely left the apartment, and when he did he mostly travelled in a car with tinted windows. And yet despite everything he now wanted to visit the park.

What had Jodie been up to while he was at the studio? This weekend wasn’t panning out as he’d intended it to at all. Despite that early morning glimpse of her on the balcony, he’d barely seen Jodie since. Instead, he’d spent the morning putting Izzie through her paces in his studio while Jodie baby-sat his son. He still wasn’t sure how it had happened.

Over breakfast he and Izzie had started talking music, a conversation that had somehow ended with him agreeing to take her to the studio while Jodie stayed with Luke.

“You won’t have to do much,” he’d assured her as Izzie went to the bedroom to collect her jacket.  “The girl who takes him swimming will be here in a minute. She’ll take Luke down to the pool and work with him for an hour or so, and by the time she finishes another care worker will have arrived.”

Jodie had smiled up at him, the memory of the kisses they’d shared in her eyes.  “Luke and I will be fine.  Izzie will be too, once she’s visited your studio.  Off you go Marcus because the longer you make her wait the bigger the hints will get.”

He’d laughed at her as he kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re probably right.  Your sister is rapidly becoming an open book to me! But make sure you take time to relax.  Don’t let Luke monopolize you, like he did at supper yesterday.”

Three hours later, he was faced with a double dilemma. He had to talk to Jodie about Izzie, and he had to take Luke to the park.  He wasn’t sure which he dreaded most.

* * *

So when are you going to tell me about Izzie?” Jodie asked. They were sitting side by side on a wooden bench while Izzie and Luke explored the hidden space beneath a weeping willow tree whose leaves trailed across the grass. Luke was wearing a green baseball cap with the riding school’s motif on the front, and a pair of dark glasses.

Marcus flexed his shoulders. He could feel the panic building. He still couldn’t believe such a flimsy disguise was all it had taken to get Luke out of the apartment and into the sunshine.  Surely he would reach meltdown soon.

Jodie took his hand.  “Stop worrying.  He’s fine…and if something changes then we’ll deal with it.”

He looked down at their twined fingers.  His were long and slim, and tanned by the Californian sun.  Jodie’s were short in comparison, with square cut, unadorned nails. Two of them were crisscrossed with healing scratches. He traced one of them with his forefinger.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Try me,” her fingers tightened on his.

“She needs to sing Jodie.  And the world needs to hear her.  Keeping Izzie away from music is…well I guess I have the same feeling about it as you do about keeping Luke indoors day after day.”

Her face suddenly pale, she turned to where Izzie was sitting.  She could only see a shadowy shape through the overhanging branches.  She could hear her laughter though.  She could hear Luke too. His high-pitched chuckles were the same as those of any other child.

Marcus
heard him as well and when Jodie looked at him again she saw his eyes were bright with unshed tears.  He gave her a watery smile.

“We’re a fine pair aren’t we?  We both thought we knew what was best for them and we were both wrong.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak.  Instead she just nodded and then gave herself up to the comfort of his embrace as he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

They sat like that until Izzie and Luke reappeared.  Neither of them seemed at all fazed by Jodie and Marcus sitting so close together.

“We’re going to the aviary,” Luke announced.

“But you’ve already done that,” said Marcus, recalling their slow trek around the cages while they listened to Luke’s encyclopedic commentary on every bird. By the time they’d reached the exit his amazement that his son was such an ornithological expert had overridden his initial boredom.  When had that happened?  When had his interest in the birds that fluttered around the balcony turned into such an all-consuming passion?

Jodie had seen the expression on his face and laughed at him.  “You didn’t know did you? 

He had given her a shamefaced smile. “Is that what you were talking about this morning?”

“Mmm, and birdseed.  I didn’t know it was possible to talk about birdseed for over an hour until I met Luke!”

And now Luke wanted to visit the aviary again. Seeing weeks of daily visits stretching out before him Marcus groaned.  Izzie grinned at him.

“We didn’t say you were invited.  Luke and I are going to see the birds.  You two can carry on canoodling. You can even talk about us if you want to,” she added.

Marcus chuckled as he watched her lead Luke across the grass towards the aviary. “She’s not exactly subtle is she?”

“It’s not her strong point, but she’s right isn’t she?  We do need to talk about them. You need to finish what you were about to tell me.”

He sighed.  “You first.”

“No. I already had my turn.  You know what I think about Luke.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder as he turned her towards him.  “Izzie then!  I think you should stop worrying about her and let her do what she wants to do, which is to sing.  You need to let her go Jodie.”

“And what if I can’t?” her voice faltered.

“Then you’ll lose her. She needs to sing.  If you’d come to the studio with us you would have seen that for yourself.  She has a tremendous voice and a real stage presence as well.  It will only take a few phone calls to have people queuing up to manage her.”

“That’s exactly what I was afraid of,” Jodie twisted out of his arms and stood up.  She looked ready to run away.

He stood up too.  “Why are you so frightened?  She’s almost seventeen for goodness sake.  And the fact she was prepared to ignore trespass signs and come looking for me shows how determined she is. I might have refused to see her, refused to help her, but she was prepared to take a chance on that. She was desperate enough to risk making a fool of herself.”

“I wish she had made a fool of herself.  I wish you had refused to help her,” she backed away from him, her face suddenly pale.

“If that’s how you feel then I don’t understand why you agreed to let me listen to her in the first place. Nor why you encouraged me to take her to the studio this morning. Why did you agree if you don’t intend to see it through?”

“I agreed because it would have broken her heart if I’d said no,” tears streaked her face.  “I hoped that visiting your studio and spending some time with you would be enough for her.  I know she has a lovely voice but I didn’t realize she was that good. I thought…hoped… this weekend would be a way of getting it out of her system.”

The pain that sliced through his heart at her words took his breath away.  Was all this for Izzie?  Had she only agreed to come to London in the hope
her sister would get over her dream? Then he remembered their kisses and knew he was being unfair.  There was more to Jodie than that, however protective she was of Izzie. Gently he took her hand and led her into the hidden green shadows of the weeping willow.

“Tell me what it is that you’re so afraid of,” he said.

“My mother…our mother was the Italian singer Annetta Parisi. You probably remember the stories about her.  She was beautiful and talented and had the voice of an angel, and in the end it killed her.  I don’t want the same thing to happen to Izzie. I couldn’t bear it if I lost her Marcus.  I just couldn’t bear it.”

She didn’t make any attempt to hide the tears that coursed down her cheeks as she explained.  “My mother had me when she was just twenty.  My father, who was only a couple of years older, drowned two days before I was born. Apparently he was larking about and although Mamma asked him not to, he climbed onto the parapet of a bridge near the spot where they were picnicking. Unfortunately he slipped, probably because he’d had too much wine, and he hit his head as he tumbled into the fast flowing river. Because she was so heavily pregnant my mother wasn’t able to help him. Instead she had to sit amongst the remnants of their picnic and watch it happen. My grandmother said she was never the same afterwards, which is not really surprising.  And when I was born I looked so much like him she couldn’t even bear to be in the same room with me. As soon as she could she left me with my grandmother and flew to Rome and then to London to concentrate on her career.”

Marcus pulled her towards him and held her tight.  It wasn’t what Jodie was telling him that was upsetting; it was the way she was telling it.  It was just so many facts recited in a monotone. A story she had learned from her grandmother, not one she could remember herself.

For a long moment she gave herself up to his embrace, then she pulled away from him again.  “I lived with Nonna, my grandmother, until I was eight years old, and I probably only saw my mother half-a-dozen times in all those years.  Then she met someone who was very rich and she married him.”

“At around the same time my grandmother became ill.  Fortunately for me though, she hung on long enough for Mamma to enter her happy families phase, so when Nonna died she brought me to England to live with her and my new stepfather.”

“And that’s when Izzie was born.”

“Not immediately.  There were a couple of years when I was the favored child. They were good times. Mamma was happy again, and I guess I was still young enough to be cute. She treated me like a doll really, dressing me in expensive clothes, sending me to ballet lessons, even trying to teach me to sing. My stepfather gave me whatever I wanted too; and when he saw how much I enjoyed riding, he bought me a horse.”